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Accountability and redress for Imperial Japan’s wartime “comfort women” have provoked international debate in the past two decades. Yet there has been a dearth of first-hand accounts available in English from the women abducted and enslaved by the Japanese military in Mainland China – the major theatre of the Asia-Pacific War. Chinese Comfort Women features the personal stories of the survivors of this devastating system of sexual enslavement. Offering insight into the conditions of these women’s lives prior to and after the war, it points to the social, cultural, and political environments that prolonged their suffering. Through personal narratives from twelve Chinese “comfort station” survivors, this book reveals the unfathomable atrocities committed against women during the war and correlates the proliferation of “comfort stations” with the progression of Japan’s military offensive. Drawing on investigative reports, local histories, and witness testimony, Chinese Comfort Women puts a human face on China’s war experience and on the injustices suffered by hundreds of thousands of Chinese women. This book will be important reading for students and scholars of war crimes, history, Asian Studies, and Women’s Studies; it will also appeal to legal experts, human rights activists, scholars of oral history, and readers interested in the Second World War.

About The Author

Peipei Qiu is a professor of Chinese and Japanese, Louise Boyd Dale and Alfred Lichtenstein Chair in Modern Languages, and the director of the Asian Studies Program at Vassar College. Su Zhiliang is a professor of history, the dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Communication, and the director of the Research Center for Chinese “Comf...

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Table of Contents

Introduction

Part 1: The War Remembered

1 Japan’s Aggressive War and the Military “Comfort Women” System

2 The Mass Abduction of Chinese Women

3 Different Types of Military “Comfort Stations” in China

4 Crimes Fostered by the “Comfort Women” System

Part 2: The Survivors’ Voices

5 Eastern Coastal Region

6 Warzones in Central and Northern China

7 Southern China Frontlines

Part 3: The Postwar Struggles

8 Wounds That Do Not Heal

9 The Redress Movement

10 Litigation on the Part of Chinese Survivors

11 International Support

Epilogue; Notes; Selected Bibliography; Index

Editorial Reviews

Chinese Comfort Women is the first English-language book featuring accounts of the “comfort station” experiences of women from Mainland China, forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during the Asia-Pacific War. Through personal narratives from twelve survivors, this book reveals the unfathomable atrocities committed against women during the war and correlates the proliferation of “comfort stations” with the progression of Japan’s military offensive. Drawing on investigative reports, local histories, and witness testimony, Chinese Comfort Women puts a human face on China’s war experience and on the injustices suffered by hundreds of thousands of Chinese women.This book is heart-rending and courageous. It gives voice, for the first time in English, to the Chinese women enslaved by the Japanese armies during the invasion and occupation of China. I finished it with a great respect for the victims whose stories are told here and for the historians who have brought them to light. - Diana Lary, author of The Chinese People at War: Human Suffering and Social Transformation, 1937-1945